


II. Castiel

by ShadowCas



Series: Where Do We Go From Here? (SPN Hiatus Creations 2019) [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Betaed, Coda, Gen, Injury, Injury Recovery, Long coda, M/M, Major Character Injury, Permanent Injury, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Episode: s14e20 Moriah, Pre-Relationship, SPN Hiatus Creations 2019, Week 2, Wings, about the same as the actual show, castiel - Freeform, implied DeanCas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 08:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19147495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowCas/pseuds/ShadowCas
Summary: The injury Cas sustained and hid since the end of world battle has come back to bite him. How can he convince Sam and Dean to take the drastic measures that need to be taken? Can he cope with falling even further as an angel?





	II. Castiel

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to sweetness47 for beta-ing.

    A wing injury was difficult to manage. Even an angel with all their grace would be in considerable pain and potentially never fully recover (though an angel at full strength would have never let their wings slip into the physical plane at all to be injured in the first place). But an angel at half power while God was  _ gone _ ? Forget it. At best, Cas's bones would heal crooked, leaving his wing permanently damaged, but no longer in pain. But luck was rarely on Castiel’s side. Not one, not two, but five zombies had managed to grasp his wing as the Winchester brothers pulled him out of the fray, and that had led to several bad breaks that didn’t seem to be healing much at all. It, of course, didn’t help that they had bitten his wing as well, their poison digging into his flesh.

    Unlike Dean’s broken foot, his wing had remained swollen and painful even after several days, and from there, its condition had only gotten worse. Cas had hidden it from the brothers, hoping desperately that the problem would go away on its own. After all, there wouldn’t be much to gain from telling them but worry. The injuries weren’t exactly treatable. Sam and Dean didn’t have medical equipment advanced enough to attend to it properly, and, at the end of the day, healing it required grace that he did not have enough of. He was exhausted as it was.

    After two weeks, however, Cas realizes that the fatigue he is feeling is more than just a lack of grace. After three, he begins to hide himself away, as his wing is so tender that even the slightest touch causes excruciating pain.

    The hard truth is that Cas is no longer angel enough to be immune to human ailments, as inconvenient as the timing is. A little more than a month later, Cas knows that there is no hope for his wing, as he lies face down on his bed for the third day straight, unable to fight the raging fever and deep ache that drills down to the bone.

    He tries to clean himself up a bit. As severe as the situation is, he doesn’t want to alarm Sam and Dean too quickly. But as vigorously as he washes his face, and as neatly as he combs his hair, he still doesn’t think he’s fooling anyone with his pale, clammy skin and damp, wrinkled undershirt. Not even his dignity is worth the pain that it would cause him to put back on his dress shirt, jacket, and coat.

    For the first time in several days, he leaves his room. He can hear Sam and Dean’s voices in the kitchen, so he slowly makes his way there, keeping a hand on the wall for support. He barely registers the brothers’ concerned faces before a rush of dizziness hits. Before he can even comprehend what is happening, he finds himself facedown on the ground. The tile is cool against his cheek, a refreshing break for his overheated body.

    “Hey! Cas!” Dean shouts. Cas is vaguely aware of Dean’s hand on his shoulder, thankfully not on the side of his broken wing. 

    “You need to cut it off,” he says, and it’s about all he can manage in his semi-delirious state. “Both of them, actually.” He tries to pull himself off the ground to look Dean in the eye, but he flops back down like a useless fish. 

    “Yeah, no. Stay down there for a minute, buddy.” Dean squeezes his shoulder and Cas sees swirls of green behind his heavy lids. “He’s not making any sense.” That’s directed at Sam. “Jeez, Cas, you’re burning up. Are you sick?”

    “Can he even get sick?” Sam chimes in.

    “Yes,” Cas grunts, face still squashed against the floor. “Badly. With my grace dwindling, and Chuck gone…”

    “So, what do we do?” Dean asks.

    “My wing. It needs to go.” 

    “Okay, drama queen,” Dean says. “It can’t be that bad.” Cas is determined to rise this time, and he manages to push himself up onto his heels despite the stiffness in his shoulders and the excruciating pain in his wing. He remains pitched forward so it doesn’t touch the ground, but at least he can look Dean in the eye with an expression that communicates that he’s dead serious.

    “What? No!” Dean exclaims.

    “Cas, wait, hold on,” Sam sputters. “Just tell us what’s wrong first. What is it?”

    “Osteomyelitis,” Cas says. Sam’s face goes pale, but it’s clear that Dean is unfamiliar with the term. Sam begins to type on his phone. “Bone infection,” Cas clarifies for Dean’s sake. “In my right wing.”

    Dean shakes his head. “Okay, but we’re not gonna just cut it off, Cas,” he says. “We’ve got meds. Antibiotics and stuff that we can give you.”

    “Yeah, amputation is pretty much the last measure,” Sam adds, looking up. “There’s no way it’s progressed to such a severe state in such a short amount of time.”

    “Normally, you’d be right,” Cas says, “but it’s a bad set of breaks, and I was bitten by zombies, too. It’s too late for antibiotics. And no,” he says, anticipating what Dean is about to suggest, “I can’t heal myself. I don’t have enough grace.”

    “Sam can call Rowena,” Dean exclaims. “We’ll figure something out. Come on, Cas, we’re not gonna… we’re not gonna do  _ that _ .” Cas’s chest aches. The fact that Dean is so unwilling to do this difficult task just makes everything harder. 

    “Already texted her,” Sam says, and sure enough, his phone chimes a moment later. “She’s still in LA. The roads are still pretty much at a standstill out of all major cities, but she says she thinks she can get here within a week if things stay calm.”

    “I don’t have a week,” Cas states simply. “I have maybe two days before the infection reaches my bloodstream.”

    “What the fuck?” mumbles Dean through his hands. He rubs vigorously at his eyes and takes a sharp breath in through his nose. “How did this even happen? Shit.”

    “My injuries would have been very difficult to treat. I had hoped that I could save up enough grace to heal them, but I can’t. Like I said, the infection was accelerated by the bites I sustained.”

    Sam swallows thickly. “Alright,” he says. “What do we do?”

    “Sam, no! We can’t let him — ”

    “Amputate my wings. I know it’s complicated, but I will walk you through it.”

    “Both?” Sam asks. 

    “If you only do one, I’ll be thrown off balance. It will be very uncomfortable and also a hindrance in combat.”

    “Both,” Dean repeats. He looks like he might vomit, which reminds Cas of his own nausea that he’s barely suppressing. He gives one solemn nod in response, not taking the risk of opening his mouth. 

    “Goddamnit,” Dean groans. He’s clearly distraught, pulling at his hair with his head held low. He snaps back up to look at Cas, eyes suddenly fiery. “Why the fuck didn’t you say something, Cas? We could have helped if we’d known sooner, but now?” He lets out an angry huff of air. 

    Cas stays silent. He knows exactly why he didn’t say something earlier: he was ashamed. He didn’t want the brothers to know how bad his injury truly was and how little he could do to heal himself. Of course, that had backfired. Now he is even more ashamed for causing trouble for Sam and Dean and letting his ego create dire consequences. They need his grace now more than ever, and his unwillingness to seek out help has made him a less useful asset to the team. He has no words to defend himself; Dean is right.

    “I can’t,” Dean continues, throwing up his hands. “I can’t do it.”

    “Dean,” Sam chastises. “We have to.”

    “Jesus Christ,” Dean mutters. He begins to pace and then finally says, “I need a coupl’a minutes,” before storming out.

    Cas wants to disappear.

  
  


    Once Dean has had some time to cool down, Cas walks the brothers through the surgery in excruciating detail. He’ll be awake through the process, but he isn’t sure how coherent he’ll be once all the painkillers are in his bloodstream, so he lays it all out for them in advance, just in case.

    He can tell that Dean is still very unhappy with him. The elder brother is fidgety, and he has a frown etched deep into his face. Cas tries to be as cooperative as possible, still feeling bad that he’s made things so difficult for Dean, and for Sam as well, even though Sam is considerably less upset.

    The medical room of the Bunker is prepped for the procedure. Cas tries to remove his shirt and just about cries from the resulting pain. Sam stops him and kindly cuts the garment off of him with a pair of scissors. “It’s gonna be okay,” Sam reassures him. Cas isn’t quite sure about that, but he is touched by Sam’s caring nature nonetheless.

    When Cas lays down on the table, however, Dean interjects, “Stop!” Cas pushes himself back up off his stomach and looks up inquisitively. “Fuck this. I’m not doing this.” Cas’s heart pummels in his chest and continues to sink like a stone as Dean rubs a hand across his disgruntled face. They’re back to square one, and Cas really isn’t sure how much more of this he can bear.

    He lets out an impatient sigh, despite himself. “Dean, I know this is difficult.” He scrunches his eyes closed, not wanting to see Dean’s face. “You have every right to be upset with me. But  _ please _ , I need you to do this.” He shifts uncomfortably, suddenly nervous that he has to make his case for this life saving procedure. “I can’t change what’s already been done, but if we don’t treat this now, I’ll be of even less use to both of you. If we do what we can now, at least I’ll still be able to fight soon and maybe even save up enough grace for another big battle.” He hangs his head. “I know this isn’t fair to you. I swear I did not mean for it to become such a terrible inconvenience. I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you. I’m sorry,” he croaks. What else can he possibly say?

    A disconcerting silence follows. After a few seconds, Cas finally looks up and is surprised to see totally horrified expressions on his friends’ faces. 

    Dean closes in on him, and grabs his arm in an unexpectedly warm gesture. “Cas, no,” he says, eyes looking just a bit shiny. “God, no, it’s not about me or Sam. That’s not why I —  _ no. _ ”

    “Then what?” Cas asks, desperate to know why else Dean could be so angry about this.

    “Because it’s your freakin’  _ wings _ , Cas. A whole set of limbs. I don’t want to — I  _ can’t _ take that from you. How could I?”

    Cas’s heart bounces up from the pit of his stomach all the way into his throat, where it squeezes tightly inside his esophagus. “Dean,” he says, and the word is more tender than he knew he was capable of. “It’s okay. They were already damaged anyways. They haven’t worked for years.” He’s surprised to find that statement is true. Cas is less concerned with the actual loss of his wings than he is for the inconvenience the whole situation has caused for his family. When it comes down to it, he doesn’t think he’ll miss them much at all. If anything, they’ve been an unwelcome reminder of his failures as an angel.

    “You’re sure you’re okay with it, Cas?” Sam asks very gently.

    “I don’t have a choice,” Cas replies in a similar tone. “Not if I want to stay alive, and I do.”

    Dean frowns. He gives Cas’s arm a squeeze before letting go. “Show me what we’re looking at.”

    With great concentration, Cas shifts his wings onto the physical plane. Both Dean and Sam are entranced, and Cas muses at the fact that the brothers have never seen his physical wings before. They only get to see them now that they’re broken, shriveled, and soon to be removed.

    “That’s incredible,” Sam says. “How come you never—?”

    “Wings are quite fragile, as you can see,” Cas explains. “It’s not advised to show them at all, but I couldn’t stop them from manifesting in battle this time.” He doesn’t add that by the time he was close enough to the brothers to feel comfortable showing his wings, they were already badly damaged by the Fall. At that point, it had seemed pointless. They were only shadows of what they had been, and he’d thought Sam and Dean wouldn’t care to see them.

    Clearly, he was wrong.

    Dean gravitates over to Cas’s left wing, the one that is still functional for now. “Beautiful,” he breathes, and Cas can’t help the small bit of pride that warms within him, despite his wing’s fate and its current appearance. Dean’s eyes trace over Cas’s mangled feathers as if they were the most spectacular sight he’d ever seen. He brushes the feathers ever so lightly with his fingers, and Cas closes his eyes for just a second, reveling in the last sensation this wing will ever feel.

    Dean’s expression darkens, however, as his gaze shifts to the doomed right wing. Cas and Sam watch silently as he takes in its twisted shape, along with purple, swollen skin and festering zombie bites. Dean reaches his hand vaguely towards Cas before it drops aimlessly, not knowing what to make of the destroyed appendage. There is a crease in Dean’s brow as he takes stock of it once more. Cas can pinpoint the exact moment when he decides that the wing is too far gone to save, a total shift in his previously reluctant demeanor. “Okay, yeah. Let’s get that thing off of you.”

 

    Two weeks after the surgery, Cas is doing well. There is some pain in his wing stumps and some phantom pain, as well, but it’s nothing compared to the complete agony of the bone and tissue decay when his wings were still attached. Rowena hadn’t been able to get out of the city, after all, due to another zombie outbreak, but she had sent Sam some simple spells to accelerate the healing process, which have really dulled down the pain quickly.

    In fact, it doesn’t even occur to him that he could be feeling far worse about this whole ordeal until Sam sits them all down at the kitchen table one night and makes sure that Cas is being honest with them about what he’s goes going through.

    “I just want to make sure that you’re really doing okay,” Sam says. “And if you  _ are _ going through something, it’s fine to not be okay.”

    Cas thinks carefully about what Sam just said, wanting to be as truthful as he can be in his response. “I really am okay,” he says slowly, considering every word. “I haven’t had much grief over losing them, if any at all.” In fact, Cas has felt lighter, both physically and emotionally, in the time that he’s been free of the damaged appendages. Now that they’re no longer there, he realizes for the first time how much of a toll it took on him to carry that dead weight around for so long. On top of that, it’s just nice to not have them as a reminder anymore. He’s always felt that his wings represented his status as an angel, and how far he had fallen. They had brought up old feelings of duty and obedience, things that he had tried to distance himself from in recent years.

    He hasn’t felt very angelic in a long time.

    “I think they’ve been weighing me down for a while now,” he says. “It feels good to be free of them.”

    The brothers nod thoughtfully. Finally, Dean reaches out and claps Cas on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re okay, Cas.”

    Cas smiles and nods. He’s glad, too, and more than anything, he’s grateful for all Dean and Sam have done for him, especially this. Maybe now that it’s all over with, he can finally leave Castiel behind and just be… Cas.


End file.
